I need input on a few situations I'm dealing with (Win XP)

[XorSystem]

I was recently hired for a job as an IT tech, and a few issues have been put in-front of me, and I'm wondering what the best was to go about dealing with them is. Any help would be appreciated dearly. This is at a University and I am still a student, so I'm really looking towards those who have worked in this field for a while, for guidance

First issue: The individuals using the office building are using Eudora as their e-mail client. My boss wants me to find a way to have their stuff backed up just in-case one of the genius users happens to download something that messes up their machines (which is going to be a separate issue). So what I've looked at doing, is using a command-line zip program, to zip their Eudora profile folder, and then send it via a batch file to their networked drive, just to have it as a back-up. I'm written the program but in my heart, I don't think it's the most efficient way of doing it. Plus deploying it will be a major issue. Anyone have any suggestions on an easier way to backup certain files and sending them to a network location?

Issue two: Everyone has administrator access, which I hate and I've been given the green light to completely take that away from them. Unfortunately, on the majority of computers that I've done it to, when they log in to their current existing profiles, the mapped drives are gone, the theme is gone, and unaccessable, and all the shortcuts are gone. Is there a workaround for this? I'd prefer that everyone have a limited or standard user account, but they also need to be able to work.

Issue three: Is there a way to slipstream currently installed programs into an XP installation? For instance, I know how to slipstream SP2 onto it, but we have some particular database software and whatnot, that I wish I could install directly with it. We were talking about using Norton Ghost as an image deployer, but unfortunately, we have so many types of computers in this office that it wouldn't be logical to have 20 different images for the various computers. So it there a way to just pop in a disk, create a windows installation, with all the stuff set-up already, so I don't have to go through the process every time I need to rebuild a system?

I know there is a lot of information, but I believe that someone can give me atleast a knudge in one direction, allowing me to get this place working like clockwork, as of right now, it's in a decent amount of shambles. Thanks for any help

-Jake

 

[darkpark]

first issue: does everyone have their own network home drive? does it get backed-up regularly? if so, than why not reconfigure eudora to store it's data there?

issue two: i'd do the following: log the user out of the computer, delete their profile, change their access, and than have them log back in so that windows creates a brand new profile for them.
by the way, are their profiles local or remote? how are network drives mapped? manually or via a login script?

issue three: look into scripts. pick up the windows xp resourse book. you could also look into 3rd party software packaging application.

 

[XorSystem]

first issue: does everyone have their own network home drive? does it get backed-up regularly? if so, than why not reconfigure eudora to store it's data there?

issue two: i'd do the following: log the user out of the computer, delete their profile, change their access, and than have them log back in so that windows creates a brand new profile for them.
by the way, are their profiles local or remote? how are network drives mapped? manually or via a login script?

issue three: look into scripts. pick up the windows xp resourse book. you could also look into 3rd party software packaging application.

Thanks for the response

1: Yes, everyone has their own mapped drives. I was thinking of doing that, but above Eudora, I would also like to backup their 'My Documents' just so some genius doesn't come along and happen to delete their own My Documents folder (which has happened, saddly enough, twice)

2: Their profiles are domain oriented but are saved locally. Drives are mapped via their locally saved domain accounts (best lingo I know, sorry if it's incorrect), and they're mapped manually. I just don't want to have to go through 50+ computers deleting and re-doing people's profiles. This office is probably the busiest place in the University, and to have certain people's computers down for even 15 minutes is a stretch

3. thanks, going to do that now